Abstract

Jamming, Counting and Changing Phase

Raissa D'SouzaUniversity of California, Davis (UC Davis)

Transport phenomena plays an underlying role in a broad range of physical systems from traffic flow on roadways and the Internet, to flow of nutrients in biological systems. Often we see a phase transition, that the flow comes to an abrupt halt and jams with just a small change in an external control parameter. What makes a system likely to jam? Can we enhance or delay the onset? This talk will address these questions through two models, the BML model of traffic flow, and a simple modification of the Erdos-Renyi random graph model.